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" ...The hacking
is fun and adapts well to different play styles... "

&nbsp Title: Onimusha 3: Demon Siege by Capcom

&nbsp Format: Action / Adventure for the PS2

&nbsp Reviewing Monkey: Furious George

&nbsp The Hype: The third of the demon-hacking
samurai series, now with 3D environments, revised controls, and Jean Reno.

&nbsp What This Monkey Thought...

&nbsp Graphics: Stepping away from its pre-rendered
roots, Onimusha 3 has fully 3D environments and a much more dynamic camera.
Of course, the tradeoff is loss of detail in both the backgrounds and models,
but the game still looks beautiful. You'll notice consistent slowdown when you
pull off some of the more extravagant special moves against a screen full of
baddies, but you can forgive it in light of the otherwise solid frame rate,
the light-blooms, water effects, and great architecture. 4 out of 5

&nbsp Playability: Another dramatic change for
the series is in the gameplay - while the basic premise of moving from screen-to-screen,
hacking through piles of demon ninjas wearing night-vision goggles and sucking
up their energy afterwards to improve you equipment hasn't changed, the controls
are more responsive and the pacing is much faster than before. Thankfully, the
hacking is fun, and adapts well to different play styles; you can always get
through an area if you play cautiously, so the game is never too difficult...
and if you've got twitch timing, you can put yourself at risk to pull of a very
satisfying chain of hits to eviscerate everything on the screen in a flash.
Throughout the game,
you'll switch between the Samurai Samanosuke and the French special forces guy
Jacques. Each plays noticeably differently, and being able to switch out weapons
to trade off speed, power, and reach gives the game enough variety to prevent
the "run here, kill these guys" gameplay from getting stale too quickly. 4 out
of 5

&nbsp Story and Drama: You might be thinking,
"Jean Reno? He's cool...Takeshi Kaneshiro-- he's hot (and if you're not thinking
this, you should be. The man is fine....), and the two of them together in an
epic spanning present day and medieval settings sounds like it could be cool."
And after watching the jaw-dropping CG intro, you'd probably be pretty pumped.
But somewhere between the point when Jean Reno's voice gets replaced by the
random American voice-actor and the arrival of the teenage time-traveling fairy
who makes it clear that she is going to be with you for the entire game, the
realization that this is yet another video game plot will hit home.
Problem is,
it's bad even for a video game plot. The creepy mood cultivated in the first
game is tossed out for an attempt at EPIC ADVENTURE that blends
cliché with typically bad voice acting and surreally bad dramatic settings.
There is some enjoyment to be had watching a Samurai, a ten-year-old boy, and
a policewoman speeding away, Return of the Jedi style, from an exploding French
cathedral...and then watching the same cathedral in another time get destroyed
by a flying Japanese castle on the back of a rocket-propelled demon dragonfly
(complete with landing gear)...but not enough to make up for the pain. 1 out
of 5

&nbsp Multiplayer and Replayability: The game
is a decently long adventure, and provides you with unlockable weapons, silly
costumes, fun mini-games, and a number of difficulty levels. 4 out of 5

&nbsp The Verdict:

Overlooking the painful plot (something
most gamers should be used to by now), you have a solid action title that
rewards skilled playing and provides enough variety and pretty settings
to delay the onset of repetitive-hack-n'-slash syndrome.

&nbsp The Good: Greatly improved controls over
the other two, cutting demons in half is fun, and the CG intro is one of the
best.

&nbsp The Bad: The plot will cause you pain
in your brain organ.

&nbsp The Overall Ugly: Kinda plays like a katana
controller peripheral. It's a Katana! It's a PS2 controller! And it doesn't
really function well as either...

&nbsp What it's Worth: Pick it up new if you're
a fan of the series, otherwise seek it out used.